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Tuesday, April 21, 2009

A Smattering of Updates

The news about the Pirate Bay conviction has gone all over the web over the last few days, and I was asked to weigh in over at Computer Shopper magazine after which I felt compelled to expand on my thoughts. I chose to do so at the kkoagulaa blog since some of the surrounding issues are addressed pretty thoroughly in thee kkoagulaa manifestoooo.

On the Veil of Thorns front, we have decided to show our support by releasing the full Veil of Thorns back catalogue as a torrent on the Pirate Bay site. We would appreciate it if everyone reading this would download the torrent, seed it for as long as you can to keep it alive and pass the torrent along. If you have a music blog, it would be lovely if you'd post any of these releases with links back to us, to the statement on kkoagublogg and weigh in with your own thoughts.

I would love to get a conversation going about every aspect of this issue. We're all in flux, and creativity in all things is needed more than ever.

More Cognitive Dissonance Transmissions coming later.

Torrent info:

There is a thought that occurs to me as I drive past the many gated communities in this ritzy area of Florida. I'm glad the real estate speculators, Disney executives and yuppies are walled in and kept safely from the rest of us. We just need to lock the gates from the outside. I would love to see the major labels and movie studios come up with the perfect impregnable DRM, so they can be left to rot within their walled gardens.

This time is the best possible opportunity for true artists to get creative with ways to make a living. Under the old label system, it was mainly the few, the malleable, the aspirational among artists who benefitted. The RIAA argument that piracy hinders artists from making a living is bollocks. Music has always been a hard gig, it's just that now the majority are on the treadmill of writing, production, release and touring for themselves instead of a group of suits who lend them cash in return for the artists indenture.

This torrent was created to show dissent with the ruling, and in the spirit of freedom, that creative chaos which hidebound institutions fight with the impulse for stasis and death.